1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the field of wireless communication, and more specifically to devices, methods and software for centralized wireless communication session planning while in a DCF mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
Local area networks (LANs) are increasingly used to transfer data. A relatively new application is wireless LANs, also known as WLANs. These can provide the benefits of a wired LAN, without requiring the different stations to be physically coupled to each other. There is no need for procuring transmission wires such as coaxial conductors, twisted prayers of wires, optical fibers, etc. for transferring the data. Instead, the data is transferred through space, either using radio frequency (RF) waves (which are also known as microwaves), or optical frequency waves, such as infrared (IR) light. A network may be formed by bringing components close together, without the need to plug transmission wires to them.
Radio based WLANs have several characteristics which differ from those of wired LANs. These-characteristics include lower achievable data capacity, which is due to a number of factors. These factors include bandwidth and power limitations, higher error rates, and a communication capacity that changes with time and may depend on the particular source and destination of the transmission. The latter may be due to interfering signals.
A number of characteristics remain the same. One of them is the predominant software architecture for implementing communication. WLANs may use a multilayer communication protocol stack such as the standard open systems interconnection (OSI) management compatible architecture, which is also used for the internet. Much of this architecture is documented in literature produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
A difficulty arises when wireless communication devices first attempt to establish a network. A number of peripheral station devices may want to exchange data with a single access point. The stations issue reservation requests, to reserve a session for exchanging data. These reservation requests may be conflicting, if they are for the same time. There is a need to resolve conflicting requests.